On Coping with NFP Zealotry

A reader writes me over at the Register, attempting to deal with the spirit of Jansenism as it manifests itself in zeal against the Impure with Insufficient Numbers of Children.

One of the places where Christians habitually tend to drop the ball is in failing to recognize that salvation is by grace  through faith expressing itself in acts of virtue.  Instead, we tend to want to create laws and shibboleths.  It can be anything from “Have you had *enough* kids to *really* qualify as prolife?” to “Do you recycle and support NPR *enough*?  Or are you insufficiently attuned to *real* social justice issues?”  It doesn’t really matter what the law is about, just so long as we are erecting it to keep out the riff raff and pride ourselves on our Purity.